Merchandise - “Listen Up!” 7″  (Cityscape)
This single is packaged in a very similar style to last year’s “Sometimes” 7″ - in fact, with its brown sleeve with cartoon drawing and white vinyl, I had to double check that I didn’t have this record already! And like the previous single, the A-side is a surefire winner, that feels full of life and relaxed all at the same time with a bouncy piano-led melody. On the flip is the bossa-infused “Lonesome Beauty”, which is also lively, though it does seem to go on at least a minute too long. With a pair of fine singles, I look forward to hearing the band’s new album!  MTQ=2/2

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Last but not least is Cityscape’s Merchandise with the summery pop gem Listen Up! It’s ‘Girl From Mars’ era Ash but more laidback and subtly sophisticated. Melodically simple and nicely structured, this sticks in the brain longer than you really want it to, which is annoying, but again, a sign of quality songwriting.

Merchandise: Listen Up! (7″, Cityscape CITY-S-009)

Okay okay, this single is available on CD as well, but the CD doesn’t come on white vinyl, now does it? Regardless of the technical implications of pressing a CD on vinyl, you just don’t get 7″ diameter CDs. Merchandise are like Baby Bird’s cheerier brother, like the Badly Drawn Boy knock-off act it’s okay to like because they’re about fifty times better. They do accomplished, layered pop music with one foot in the ‘literate, dour Northerners’ camp and the other in the one that says ‘we’ve got beards, but we’re fun and approachable’.

Simon Minter

Merchandise’s new single arrived with me yesterday and seeing the cover, that familiar toon style of illustration and the brown/orange thang is really starting to stamp the Merchandise brand on all that they do. When a band starts to become a brand, things start to feel more cohesive and as a result things start to get a bit more exciting in some way. It should be avbout the music but if pop music was just about the music we’d be in a very different place.

Listen Up! is the follow-up to Sometimes - one of those catchy tunes from 2008 that still weaves its way into my head frequently. It’s a clever, confident track that doesn’t do very much. This makes it good… for me. Poppy to the hilt, it uses a lot of repetition (”You were my world wer - wer - wer world”), and has catchiness written all over it. It’s going to be another one of those naggers that keeps popping into my head in the spring of 2009.

http://www.minnellium.com/listen-up-by-merchandise

Looking forward to Merchandise’s album coming later this year - five years in the making.

If you love yourself some lo-fi pop, (and really, what are you doing here otherwise?), you’re gonna be bowled over by the latest 7″ single from Merchandise. The band hails from the lazy tongued shores of the UK, and brings to mind a more emphatic and punchy answer to The Boy Least Likely To.

Two songs abound here: the bouyant “Listen Up!” and the slightly more melancholy “Lonesome Beauty”. It’s truly one of the most addictive singles that have ever graced the hallowed halls of RetroLowFi HQ, and we’re not just saying that because of the delicious looking white vinyl it’s pressed on, either.

Really. Seriously, take a listen to “Listen Up!” here.

Then buy it from Cityscape records!

The Devil Has The Best Tuna

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 08, 2009

Sunday Goody Sunday

Merchandise

Genre: Indie / Alternative / Pop

From: Bolton and Manchester,

United Kingdom

Bolton pure popsters Merchandise have a new single coming out towards the end of the month.

‘Listen Up’, the follow-up to the well received single ‘Sometimes’ (see video below) is a nice little taster for their forthcoming album ‘For the Masses’. However it’s overshadowed by the b-side (which is becoming an increasingly archaic term in these days of downloading) ‘Lonesome Beauty’ a seductive summer smoothie indebted to the seriously underrated Pale Fountains, Love’s ‘Forever Changes’, Burt Bacharach and The Lotus Eaters.

Showing their versatility the aptly named ‘The Sunday Song’, provided courtesy of the Devil, sounds like The Dandy Warhols if they’d been born in Bolton.

Go Try

MP3 - Merchandise - The Sunday Song

If anyone from the IFPI or Blogger is reading this track is linked direct from the Merchandise website

Go Visit

Merchandise - Myspace// Website

Label - Cityscape Records // Cityscape Records Myspace